Feel Something
by ObsessedRomantic
Summary: A multiple POV songfic that skips around in time, written around I Wanna Feel SOmething by Trace Adkins.


**FEEL SOMETHING **

**Disclaimer: ** The O.C. belongs to Josh and the song belongs to Trace Adkins. Whatever other production companies own the rights to these things, I was too lazy to look up. In any case, I am not making money off this.

**Summary: ** A songfic from multiple pov based on I Wanna Feel Something by Trace Adkins. Somewhat angsty, multiple pairings alluded to.

**A/N: ** Skipping back and forth through time, changing POVs – hope I don't lose anyone. Apologies for any confusion. Also for this not being the next chapter of Summer Loving. My muse just kept singing this song over and over again until I finally wrote the fic. She's such a bitch sometimes.

--xxx--

_If you're telling me I'm not on fire, you're just preaching to the choir._

_I've gotten dull as old barbed wire - from living. _

Nights were the worst.

Days I could fill. With crafts, household projects, chores; anything that kept me from thinking about **it**. I couldn't spent **too** much time on any one thing, though; because, inevitably, it would start to remind me of _**her**_, of when _**she**_ was alive, and I'd have to stop. Or the attempt would fail, and I'd have to get rid of it and everything related to it; because I couldn't **stand** another failure, not when my last one had had such painful consequences.

Avoiding my surviving daughter was a necessity that I wished made me feel guilty or ashamed or regretful. But every time I thought of approaching her, I would see the shadow of the other in her face, an echo of her sister in the youthful grace, the sparkling eyes; and I'd **have** to turn away, unable to bear the void where my heart used to be.

The passion that used to drive me was **gone**, dead and buried; I couldn't even bring myself to have sex with my fiancée. I'd **think** about it; but then the possibility of another little bundle of tiny pink perfection would occur to me, and I'd shut down. I knew Neil was frustrated, that the distance between us was growing. I just couldn't manage to care.

Laying there beside him, feeling the seconds ticking time off my life, each minute one Marissa would never experience, the empty hours piling up until they were suffocating, the walls starting to close in...

Those hours were why I'd taken the car for a drive in the middle of the night, not because of the pills. Pills like the ones that had almost killed my beloved girl, my love child, my darling angel. No, it wasn't the pills that had led me to push the pedal closer and closer to the floor until I finally lost control of the vehicle. It was an attempt to escape the hazy limbo I was existing in, to force myself to take an interest in living with the adrenaline rush of risking my life.

It hadn't worked, and my future husband had changed my prescription, blaming the drugs for my irrational behavior. In a way, I wish they **had** been the reason, that I **had** been high or stoned or whatever the kids were calling it these days. At least then, I wouldn't be trapped in this nightmare my life had become.

At least then, I would_** feel**_ something.

_Last night I watched the evening news, it was the same old nothing new._

_It should've cut me right in two - but it didn't. _

_I don't know why it didn't. _

Opening the file, I spared the room around me a brief glance and wished it depressed me.

It **should** depress me, this cold and barren room that was **still** friendlier than what awaited these kids around the corner, past the security check and behind the bars. **This** wasn't the kind of thing I should be used to, the circumstances that brought me here not something that I'd ever imagined becoming accustomed to.

Truthfully, I was just too tired to get excited about anything anymore. Tired of seeing my wife working herself to exhaustion for her father's approval, something I knew she'd never get. Tired of **knowing** my son was miserable and not being able to do anything about it. Tired of giving the courts my best (leaving nothing for my family) only to have the clients I'd gone to bat for wind up right back in jail for the _same exact thing_.

I sighed, flipped through the file in front of me. I'd better get started on this one, or he'd be sitting in front of me before I even read his name. I skimmed over the home life I wished was sickening in its familiarity and paused, re-reading the arrest statement to make sure I'd actually read what I'd** thought** I had.

'Trey said we should steal a car to pay off a debt, so we did. We crashed it in the course of our evasion of police pursuit.'

What the hell? Where was his blame of society for his problems? Where was his hostility to the cops? Where was his attitude of persecution?

And what kind of kid with his background used phrases like 'in the course of' and terms like 'evasion'?

I flipped to the other statement, reading about 'Atwood luck' and 'stupid cops'. **This** guy even blamed his brother for hesitating, claiming that they wouldn't have been arrested if 'Ryan' hadn't been 'such a little bitch'. Before I could come to terms with the differences between the siblings, my new client was standing on the other side of the table, flicking his eyes over me as I introduced myself. Somehow, I ended up smiling at him, responding to his look with an amused comment. Because it wasn't the standard disdain or contempt in his sharp blue eyes. No, this was more of a 'you gotta be kidding me' expression.

The first words out of his mouth were spoken concern for 'Trey'.

Every other kid in his position would be worried about what was going to happen to **them**, and **this** one only wanted to know about the guy who'd gotten him into it. His test scores hit another of the nerves I'd thought were deadened, his sense of humor making it even **more** criminal for me to just leave him to the mercies of his situation. I had to help him, if only because, somehow, he'd snapped me out of my headed-for-burn-out haze.

My outrage for my clients was back, as was my determination that my son would start **talking** to me, **and** my desire to re-connect with my wife. It was so strange to be returned to who I used to be by a fifteen minute encounter with a juvenile delinquent; but there was just something **about** this kid, a resonance with my own past, perhaps. Maybe **that** was why I gave him my card, my home number; hoping he wouldn't be too proud to use it and hoping just as much that he wouldn't have to.

Watching the car weave into traffic, I tried not to let my fears about what would happen to him at home distract me from the legal matter of keeping him from ending up in jail.

Of all the things I'd been expecting when I'd been handed his file, the last was that I would feel something.

_I just wanna feel something, something that's real;_

_Something - that moves me, that proves to me I'm still alive. _

_I wanna heart that beats and bleeds, a heart that's busting at the seams._

_I wanna care, I wanna cry, I wanna scream. _

_I just wanna feel: something. _

This isn't how it was supposed to be.

I looked into Jack's mirror and wondered when I'd become my mother. Using people, using sex, as tools to get what we wanted.

Or thought I'd wanted.

There was no sense of achievement to my becoming social chair, no sense of victory at seeing Marissa brought low. I **should** be consumed with guilt for the damage I'd caused, however indirectly, to her future, and that of her boyfriend. I should be _envious_ of the way their friends and family had rallied around them, _ashamed_ of how I'd manipulated Summer, _appalled_ at my seduction of a school official to further my goals.

Nothing.

It looked like I truly **was** the heartless bitch everyone said (when they thought I was out of earshot) that I was. I couldn't even muster disdain for the vapid, back-stabbing sheep that called themselves my 'friends'. Couldn't garner the merest shred of enthusiasm for my senior year, or for the activities that had exhausted the man sleeping in the next room. I should be disappointed that my first affair (my first lover) had turned out to be so banal, so boring, so bourgeois; but I couldn't seem to bring myself to care.

Everything was going my way, so it was vaguely frustrating that I couldn't manage to feel something.

_If you're telling me that's just how it is, I don't buy it;_

_Because once I was kissed by a red-headed girl with cherry lips:_

_On her porch, when I was sixteen._

It wasn't working.

I'd married the woman in the obviously mistaken impression that she would, eventually, come to care for me as much as my money. That maybe the spark that was there in the beginning would be enough to carry us through, that I could have a family again.

What an idiot I'd been.

Julie was no Rose, that was for sure. I couldn't even trust her to stay faithful, not like I had my first wife. Of course, I'd had to **fight** for that one. Her mother had been our biggest obstacle, wanting something 'better' for her daughter than 'some construction worker'. I'd wanted something better, too; so I'd driven myself: gotten my diploma, started the Newport Group; given my beloved the life she deserved. In return, she gave me two beautiful girls and a lifetime of love and support that had all started with a simple kiss goodnight on her front steps.

I should've remembered the lesson I'd learned the day we buried her before proposing to this gold-digging bimbo. Should've looker deeper than the similarities of passion between the two women before committing to someone who could never **begin** to replace what I'd lost. Well, now I knew better. I'd get myself loose, and go back to the strict business relationships of women like Gabrielle.

No matter how boring; it just wasn't worth the risk to try and feel something.

_And I felt it somewhere in my soul, and time stood still, and I couldn't let go. _

_I can't tell you 'cause I don't know, how I got so cold. _

_When did I get so cold?_

It was the best kiss I'd ever had in my **entire** life.

Fireworks, electricity, sparks; all the wonderful, intoxicating, erotic things a kiss was **supposed** to be.

It was, however, going to be the **last **time I locked lips with Seth Cohen.

There was no **way** my friends would ever accept him, and I'd spent too much time and effort to reach the top of the social circle at Harbor to throw it away on the basis of _one_ _kiss_; no matter how amazing it had been.

We had nothing in common, anyway. Just look at the way he dressed! Hopeless, he was just a complete fashion nightmare. Then there was his interest in _comic books_, for crying out loud;** and** the fact that his main mode of transportation was a freaking _**skateboard**_**.**

What I'd felt, or **thought** I'd felt; had just been a side-effect of the champagne, the thrill of meeting the most powerful men in Newport. It had **nothing** to do with that stupid poem or his protests that I was too good to be acting like (if I was honest) Julie Cooper.

So he was a good kisser, so what?

That didn't mean I had to mistake a hormonal reaction for him making me feel something.

_I hate that I'm jaded and I made you cry. _

_Still you stick around me, only God knows why._

What a jerk I was.

I'm talking epic proportions, monumental, colossal even. I mean, here was this angel, sent down by Jesus and Moses to make my life worth living, and I just kept letting her down.

The lying, the running away, the hooking up with other people (Alex, Anna) when I couldn't stand to even** think** of her doing the same, the _**huge**_ mistake of breaking up with her and the idiot proposal over the pregnancy scare; all the insane shit I'd put her through over the years, and she was still **here**. Still here, and still in love with me; which was like a whole handful of miracles.

And she asked so little, really; in return for her dedicated affection. Just a little audio/visual evidence that I wasn't still the pathetic loser who made such a mess of our high school romance. Just a short film about what truly mattered, what was really important.

Just for me to show her that there was more to me than sarcasm, disdain, and cynicism.

To show her I could actually feel something.

_Damn it all to hell I'm done. _

_I don't like what I've become. _

I was done.

Done with trying to live up to my father's expectations. He was gone now, so there really wasn't any way I could gain the approval I'd spent so much of my life striving to earn. His absence would always cause me pain, but I was done with letting it rule me.

I was done, too; with remaining silent when my family made mistakes. If they had the courage to face me about **my** errors, I could find the inner strength to confront them about **theirs**. My love for them had to be strong enough for me to express my concerns about the worrisome aspects (Sandy's cold-blooded transformation, Ryan's struggle with his violent tendencies, Seth's immaturity) of their behavior.

There would be no more yielding to popular opinion, either. If the ladies couldn't handle my new teetotal attitude, or their own need for my new business venture; than that was too bad for them. I wasn't going to cater to a crowd that feigned sympathy while anticipating a relapse they believed to be inevitable.

They were going to be disappointed, though.

No more would I be using the crutch of booze to ease my pain, calm my nerves, or even to intensify sensation.

I may be an alcoholic, but I was done reaching for a bottle in order to feel something.

_I just wanna feel - something, something that's real;_

_Something – that moves me, that proves to me I'm still alive. _

_Run my fingers through your fingers cross your face and through your hair_

_And close my eyes, and breath you in like air. _

_I just wanna feel – something._

It really took me by surprise.

I would've said I was in shock, but when you were in shock, you were numb.

And I was **so** very far from numb.

My family had forgiven me, welcomed me back into their comforting embrace with no mention of my stupidity in leaving in the first place. They understood why I'd done what I'd done and, more importantly; they hadn't given up on getting me to come home. Their unshakeable support and affection only made me love them more. Especially since now I needed it more than I ever had before.

A knot of anger, shame, frustration, regret, and guilt surged up every time I was reminded of Marissa. Back in familiar surroundings, that was more often than not. Of course, it was a slightly **smaller** knot each time. Maybe it was that Summer didn't hate me, or that Julie and Kaitlyn didn't blame me; but I could actually see a day when remembering my first girlfriend wouldn't feel like taking a crowbar to the gut. Like Sandy had said, I suppose I **was** getting used to it.

What I couldn't get used to was what (or rather, who) had pulled me through that hazy limbo where I wasn't sleeping, was barely eating; where I'd been, truthfully, just going through the motions of existing.

Taylor Townsend.

Specifically, **kissing** Taylor Townsend.

Or being kissed **by** her, I was still a little unsure about that whole incident, when she'd given me the tea. I'd just laid down and closed my eyes to try and figure it out (after which I'd intended to try the tea); and the next thing I knew, it was morning. I didn't know **what** was going on, and I was having increasing difficulty ignoring the fantasies about this girl I hardly knew.

All I did know was that, whenever she was around, everything seemed brighter, more vibrant, more _**alive**_. She made me want to take the chance and be part of the world again, to risk living. I wanted to spend time with her, hold her, hear her laugh, kiss her; maybe even talk to her. I just wanted _**her**_, in all her insane glory; so I suppose there was really no denying it.

Taylor **definitely** made me feel something.


End file.
